Exclusive

The leaders of Muslim community and religious organizations signed a joint document on December 11, 2017 - The Social Concept of Muslims in Ukraine. At a solemn meeting, representatives of Islamic organizations spoke about the history of this document.

The ruins of the old church in the district center of Rozhische in Volyn have become the subject of controversy between the Protestants and the Orthodox. The temple was built in the nineteenth century by the Baptists, “the Soviets” expropriated and placed manufacturing plants in the church.

Religious Studies

The history evidences: the Local Churches that were historically associated with earthly empires were uninterested in the canonical establishment of local churches under their jurisdictions, and therefore usually granted autocephaly to churches only under the pressure of historic circumstances. No exception is the Moscow Patriarchate, which has incorporated the Orthodox Church in Ukraine since 1686.

Ukrainian Orthodoxy and Ukrainian society suffer from division. The majority of Ukrainian Orthodox believers belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. The rest of the Orthodox community of Ukraine has chosen a different path of self-proclaimed autocephaly. However, neither the first nor the second path is optimal for the Orthodox Church in Ukraine to date.

Bishop Milan (Shashik) of the Diocese of Mukachevo, UGCC, and Bishop Antal Maynek of the diocese of Mukachevo, RCC in Ukraine, appealed to the faithful asking them not to pluck primroses and not buy them from poachers. According to them, tearing the flowers, the people thus are causing irreparable environmental damage.

No wonder the researchers included all kinds of primroses (early spring flowers) in the Red Book as their number reduces annually in nature. These are all types of snowdrop, saffron (crocus), cyclamen, etc.,” they argue.

Catholic bishops say that the vast majority of primroses are sold from hand, are torn and brought to sell in bulk by poachers.

“Flowers are pulled out with bulbs to extend the shell life of bouquets. Recovery of the plants in nature is then impossible. Cutting flowers without bulbs is also harmful because it leads to genetic degeneration of plants,” they underscore.

The hierarchs emphasize that buying the primroses from the Red Book, people promote this kind of evil. Only the refusal from the purchase of these flowers can stop poachers.

“Therefore, it is important for us as conscious Christians to break the circle of destruction. This proposal can be the key one for each of us. So let us ask God in prayer for the gift of wisdom to care for his creatures as our neighbors,” the Catholic Bishops Milan (Shashvk) and Antal Maynek underscore.